How to help Africa feed itself

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Famine has revived a debate about scaling up farms on the continent.

Peter Sotamaruti’s 2-acre farm near Bungoma, a village in western Kenya, is minuscule by the standards of the developed world. But it’s double the acreage he tended five years ago. Sales of surplus corn have allowed the 49-year-old farmer and his family to trade up from a mud hut to a three-room brick house with solar-powered lights. His modest profits also cover school fees for his four high school-age children and pay for health insurance, a luxury among farmers in sub-Saharan Africa. “We now treat our farm as a business,” says Sotamaruti, who plans to expand to 4 acres in the next year.

The threat of famine has added fuel to a long-running debate over whether African governments, working in concert with nongovernmental organizations, should do more to promote commercial-scale agriculture and ease the continent’s dependence on subsistence farming. Africa is facing the world’s most severe food crisis since World War II, with some 20 million people at risk of starvation because of a combination of drought conditions and armed conflict.

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, smallholders provide as much as 80 percent of the food supply in sub-Saharan Africa. Chronically short of money for seeds and fertilizers and lacking the infrastructure to store and ship crops, these farmers are especially vulnerable to the ravages of climate change, to say nothing of civil wars. Still, the debate is not about productivity alone: In Africa, a higher share of the population is employed in farming than in any other part of the world, so policies that favor larger farms would by necessity push some growers off the land.

Christopher Barrett, an agricultural economist at Cornell, says development aid needs to be channeled toward farmers who have the wherewithal to scale up and not drained away on subsistence-level growers, who can be wiped out by a single bad year. “When the commercial-farmer class is growing, they spend in their local community and they stimulate demand for products,” he says. “They’ll hire someone to clean the house, or they’ll start a local company.”

Africa’s commercial farmers encounter many of the same obstacles as smallholders, but they have some longer-term advantages, says Sam Jones, a professor at the University of Copenhagen whose work has focused on African agriculture. In the past, “there was a feeling that smallholder farmers can be more productive because they can take advantage of family labor,” he says. “But technology is playing a larger and larger role in agriculture, and that’s harder for small farmers to get access to.”

The term “technology,” in this instance, includes things such as drought and pest-resistant seeds and chemicals being developed by DuPont Co. and Monsanto Co. specifically for Africa. Smaller farmers tend to save seeds from previous harvests, lowering yields, and they skimp on fertilizer. Larger ones also benefit from access to credit and crop insurance. Jones describes a virtuous cycle in which better-equipped, better-capitalized farmers buy out their neighbors, some of whom become laborers and some of whom find jobs in cities.

SDG 15 was created to bring attention to the negative side effects from agricultural and industrial development. Youth therefore can play a supporting role to increase awareness on environmental conservation and promote the agenda of SDG for agricultural sustainability to make sure others are aware about it.

After growing up in an environment where agriculture is not seen as an important career for young people, I realize that the potential youth groups are largely ignored in policies and programs. The Extension and Advisory Services (EAS) must engage young people in innovations and entrepreneurial activities or else they will continue migrating to cities in search of better options for living.

As a professional employed in agricultural projects wherever possible, I try to involve fellow young agricultural practitioners in development work. In addition to my work, I also give visiting lectures at Madan Bhandari Agro-Technical College at Ghorahi, Dang where I share my knowledge and experience on agricultural mechanization to students as this is relatively new in Nepal.

Today, my activities have created jobs for young people interested in livestock development, encouraged many farmers already frustrated with inadequate productivity, empowered women in the livestock value chain and have contributed immensely to the rapid multiplication of livestock and sustainability of livestock value chain in Nigeria and West Africa.

I believe that agriculture was meant to be my destiny and I am grateful for being inspired to pursue a career in science. If I had to choose all over again, I would without a doubt and a second thought choose agriculture. I love being an agronomist. It gives me enormous sense of job satisfaction and achievement.

Because of the universal reach of agriculture, I believe my career in it has, and will continue to have, a truly positive impact on the global community. #IamAg, I am involved in agriculture and surrounded by it. #AreYouAg too?

When I look back, I realise that the job I am doing today did not exist when I was a child or at secondary school. I just followed by heart and passion, and did what I feel happy doing. Therefore, my advice to someone interested in my career is to first of all love what you do.

My advice to be successful in an agricultural career is to not only focus on passing the exams and finishing all your tasks. Tomorrow you will be the one who will feed the people and you must know how to produce healthy food. Your worth will only be equal to what you know.

If you are looking for a job that gives you real job satisfaction, inner peace and a relationship with nature then I invite you to study agriculture. Agriculture is a noble profession because it was man’s first occupation and remains critical to the survival of mankind.